Inches of "Global Warming" Get Dumped on NASA-GISS HQ

[Update: New York City got more snow in October 2011 than ever before in recorded history, according to the NY Daily News (including some good photos). Special thanks to WUWT commenter NikFromNYC who posted this photo link of Snow near GISS HQ last evening.]

If the forecasts hold up, New York City, home to NASA-Goddard Institute of Space Studies, will get up to a few inches of snow, unprecedented for October.

Yes, I know “weather isn’t climate”, but every time there is a heat wave anywhere in the world, that weather event is put forth as “proof” of Global Warming, with the implication that human activities are responsible for most of the warming. So now, it is the turn for us Skeptics to show how silly such claims are. And, what is more foolish (in a healthy enjoyable way :^) than Seinfeld? We never discovered how Kramer supported himself – perhaps he was one of the climate scientists at GISS?

NOTE: The above image is a file photo from Google images. If any WUWT reader has a link to a photo of the GISS building taken during the current snowstorm, please post it and we will replace the image. It would also be nice to have a contemporary photo of the Occupy Wall Street folks coping with a little snow.

Ira Glickstein wrote: So now, it is the turn for us Skeptics to show how silly such claims are.
There are genuine skeptic websites that paint a more nuanced picture of science (Collide-a-scape, for example). This blog isn’t one of them.

Tromping around Manhattan in winter weather can be a frigid experience. My first apartment there while at Columbia was near Tom’s Restaurant, halfway between it and St. John the Divine. James Hansen moved to the NYC area from Iowa, and may remember the winters of his youth to have been colder, which they would have been. Gavin Schmidt moved to NYC from the UK, and I am sure that his first 15-minute walk in true winter, with the wind whipping around the buildings as it does, got his attention. On the other hand, if he were to moved back home, he’d probably find the UK during winter to be colder than when he left it.
Having moved recently back to New England, I’m in the part of the current storm where it’s steady, cold rain, with a bit of wind (probably start to blow in earnest soon). No sane person would wish for a tree-snapper to visit his neck of the woods. And yet …
With my book nearly out, I blogged today for the first time in months. my subject? The insane views about snow held by Gore et al.: http://bit.ly/sg7xD1

Well if someone is going to take the trouble to go and take a picture, would it be too much to ask to ask for them to make a snowman too? Holding a sign that says:
Early Snow = Global Warming = Yeah….right.
Actually, you’ll need a team. Someone from that NASA/GISS office might see you and there could be a confrontation. So, you’ll need people to make the snowman, and someone to be the “leader” who confronts whoever descends upon you to explain how cold actually DOES = warming. You’ll need another person still to stand off to one side and take pictures of the whole thing. If things get really tense, the snowman makers could pelt each other with snow while screaming “Here! Have some warming!”.
I say they should pelt each other because I certainly wouldn’t want to be accused of encouraging violence against those poor NASA/GISS scientists. But it would be, oh so funny, if someone could snap a picture of Hansen or Schmidt accidently getting a face full of ” the cold hard facts”.

Nick Stokes says:
October 29, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Don’t worry Nick, it’s coming…not that snow in October means anything (ahem).
We’ve already got our several inches of October snow in New Hampshire from two days ago, and more is coming…err…not that it means anything (ahem).

Nick Stokes says:
October 29, 2011 at 2:25 pm
“Odd reporting here. The headline “Inches of “Global Warming” Get Dumped on NASA-GISS HQ”. And sure enough, photo of snow, But the only actual fact is a weather forecast.”
The Daily Mail is reporting that over an inch has already fallen in NYC. But i agree that Ira’s headline is incompatible with his opening sentence.

What I find most interesting according to NOAA’s National Climate Data Center is that continental US winters are cooling at a significant rate. While overall annual temperatures have also been cooling at a good clip since 1998, most of that cooling is in the winter months. This is a plot of the winter temperatures (December – February) for the Continental US since 1998:http://i42.tinypic.com/2a96rh2.gif
The trend is an astounding -3.26 degF / Decade. The bold horizontal line is the 1901-2000 average. As you can see, winter temperatures have been falling considerably. Interestingly, April through September temperatures (six month period) have shown practically flat since 1998 with a trend of only -0.08 degF / Decade.http://i44.tinypic.com/11wc521.gif
It really is a puzzle to me.

actually not unprecedented…I believe it snowed in october during the civil war.
The climate she may change, but snow in October ain’t the change I was hoping for.
A sad New Englander looking at a foot or so tonight
BDH

Worthwhile time to remember that Robert Goddard was considered a deviant from the settled science in his time.
“It is when one considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt … for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left.
Professor Goddard, with his “chair” in Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react … Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.” New York TImes editorial 1920.
It only took the Times until 1969 to admit they were wrong.
“Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.” New York Times, July 17, 1969

Yes, no-one doubts the world has warmed, do they? The BEST results were just nothing because you already know that the world is warmed, don’t you? And that’s why you never bother tiresomely hyping cold weather. Oh, wait.

Just talked to my daughter, who lives in the East Village (10th st.) She said it is very unplesant but not snowing yet. She had heard on NY! that it was snowing in the Bronx.
When we lived up near Tom’s (6 blocks), many years ago (pre-Seinfeld), we called the place Ptomaine Tom’s. My daughter lives a block or two from Veselka. You would go Go up town to eat at Tom’s, when you could eat at Veselka.

crosspatch says: October 29, 2011 at 3:00 pm winter temperatures have been falling considerably. Interestingly, April through September temperatures (six month period) have shown practically flat since 1998 with a trend of only -0.08 degF / Decade.
It really is a puzzle to me.
It should not be a puzzle. Colder winters are due to increasing winter-time surface atmospheric pressure in the Arctic in relation to the mid latitudes, measured as a fall in the Arctic Oscillation Index.
Here is a paper that wrestles with the interpretation of how surface pressure relates to solar influences: http://www.physics.otago.ac.nz/space/2008JA014029-pip.pdf

Nick Stokes says:
October 29, 2011 at 2:25 pm
“Odd reporting here. The headline “Inches of “Global Warming” Get Dumped on NASA-GISS HQ”. And sure enough, photo of snow, But the only actual fact is a weather forecast.”
Now you know how we feel.

Mark S says:
October 29, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Ira Glickstein wrote: So now, it is the turn for us Skeptics to show how silly such claims are.
There are genuine skeptic websites that paint a more nuanced picture of science (Collide-a-scape, for example). This blog isn’t one of them.
=========
Seeing as Anthony is a bit overwhelmed with work at the moment, and encouraging people to submit posts to “this blog”, you might consider posting one of your own ?
I for one, would look forward to your “more nuanced picture of science”, expressed as a blog post.
It may open some minds.

I am old enough to remember the ‘ice age is upon us’ scare. It really did happen you know.
I thought that after the latest warm cycle was over and the globe started to cool again that the climate boys would go back to scaring us with ice; but now they say “cold is really warm”. I don’t get it. Do people really by that sort of nonsense?

For those of you in the good ole US of A – please keep hold of your share of global warming (akak Snow) for as long as possible – as we really don’t fancy it over here in the UK
Thanks in anticipation!

I hope that the OWS people have enough common sense to NOT have a carbon monoxide poisoning incident. Will somebody, unaware of the danger of use a small hibachi, or something similar, to stay warm in their tent for the next night or two, go through the the horrific experience, either debilitating or death such poisoning causes.
Of course, if such happens, it will probably be somebody else’s fault … IMHO

Mark S says:
October 29, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Ira Glickstein wrote: So now, it is the turn for us Skeptics to show how silly such claims are.
There are genuine skeptic websites that paint a more nuanced picture of science (Collide-a-scape, for example). This blog isn’t one of them.
Yawn. Have you ever had an original thought?

I’m with Ira on this one –“Yes, I know “weather isn’t climate”, but every time there is a heat wave anywhere in the world, that weather event is put forth as “proof” of Global Warming, with the implication that human activities are responsible for most of the warming. So now, it is the turn for us Skeptics to show how silly such claims are.”
While there may be some who would attempt to find minor fault with this article, the overall idea put forth by it is correct. That is the big difference – the links to a warm weather event as “proof” of GW had as their major fault the fact that the concept of what they were saying was wrong. Remember, one of the things GW was going to do would be eliminate snow in some places and our children would grow up not knowing what snow was like.
The warmer the planet gets, the colder it will be. Huh?
“Warming causes cooling” – even those grade school children that Gore mentions in his movie aren’t buying it.

Nothing like a “warm” Atlantic and a La Nina to pump moisture up the eastern seaboard. A little cold from our friends in Canada and bingo. Wons happens. Can’t be snow you after all, that was supposed to never happen again.

From the AP:
NEW YORK – Authorities say New York City’s Central Park is seeing its snowiest October on record.
National Weather Service spokesman Chris Vaccaro says 1.3 inches of snow had fallen at the park as of 2 p.m. Saturday, making this the snowiest October there since records began being kept in 1869. That’s also a record for the date of Oct. 29.
Vaccaro says it’s the first time observers at the park have measured an inch or more of snow.
Snow was continuing to fall in the city Saturday, meaning the record will grow.
The snowfall is part of a storm that’s expected to dump anywhere from a dusting of snow to about 10 inches along the East Coast.

stevo says:
October 29, 2011 at 3:17 pm
“Yes, no-one doubts the world has warmed, do they? The BEST results were just nothing because you already know that the world is warmed, don’t you? And that’s why you never bother tiresomely hyping cold weather. Oh, wait.”
The cooling comes AFTER the warming, Stevo.
That it is so rapid is not astonishing at all; a system with positive feedbacks (let us assume they exist) must have a hysteresis (for feedback gains smaller 1; and we already know the gain can’t be bigger), and once the outside input (solar) overcomes the hysteresis, the flip into the opposite direction is amplified by the same positive feedbacks that held the system up for a while whilst the input was already weakly pulling in the other direction.
Positive feedbacks that amplify warming must also amplify cooling, in other words.

Mark S,
Collide-a-scape is certainly not a skeptical blog, or anything close. However, it is one of the less obnoxious blogs.
stevo: there has been no acceleration in global warming since the LIA, which blows a pretty big hole in the CO2 conjecture. The trend is declining, as the green line shows.

Yes, I know “weather isn’t climate”, but every time there is a heat wave anywhere in the world, that weather event is put forth as “proof” of Global Warming, with the implication that human activities are responsible for most of the warming.
————-
Ira you are over simplifying things. People are counting the number of cold and hot events and comparing the counts to see if there is a trend.
People are also making judgements about the degree of extremity of extreme events relative to their memory of past extreme events. This is not reliable by itself, but if extra extreme happens on a regular basis it does constitute evidence.
So photos of restaurants showing snow is not that useful. It’s just as useful as showing a picture of the Texas drought.
What would be useful is comparing the number and extent of extreme snow events with the number and extent of extreme drought events.

Hey Jim look out the window, that white stuff isn’t sea level rise that you predicted a few years back, that is snow.
To all of you who are skeptical of this post. First of all it is snowing in NYC so it isn’t just a forecast based on computer models anymore. Second of all it is the most snow in Oct in recorded history in New York. Third, the reason it hasn’t snow in Oct much in NYC isn’t because of lack of precipitation, it rains quite a lot in NYC in October. The reason it does snow is the temperature hasn’t been cold enough. The idea that warming causes cold is just silly on the face of it.

And Ira since you are trying to turn some snow into a GISS NASA bashing exercise, I sort of feel you should actually read and understand what they say about extreme climate events, as I have an inkling you are not accurately representing their position.

Betapug says:
October 29, 2011 at 3:08 pm
“Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.” New York Times, July 17, 1969
Amazing what you can find on this site! What was the NYT’s position on Ether? What is it now?

Smokey, are you blind? Your graph shows clearly the very acceleration that you’re claiming isn’t there.
“BEST, HadCrut, RSS, GIS all show no warming for the past decade….”
A decade is too short a time to discern any trend in global temperatures at current rates of change. It’s such a very simple concept but apparently still too difficult for some.

JJ says: “This is all completely consistent with Global Warming, and it is worse than we thought.”
Quite. And it shows the need for a masive increase in Climate Research funding without any question of how the funds are spent. Like everything else, more spending, higher taxes.
Think of the grants that will come out of this. /sarc
We had our six inches of global warming last week. More to come.

Stevo says: “A decade is too short a time to discern any trend in global temperatures at current rates of change. It’s such a very simple concept but apparently still too difficult for some.”
Hmmm…
Explain then why in 1988, Dr. Jim Hansen, with less than a decade of temperature data to support him, went before congress to claim that he had seen the effects of AGW, and pushed his three scenarios?
Of course lack of more than 10 years of data may explain why they had to rig the air conditioning in the hearing room to get the point across.
Transcript:
This transcript excerpt is from PBS series Frontline which aired a special in April 2007.
TIMOTHY WIRTH: We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was. So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it.
DEBORAH AMOS: [on camera] Did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day?
TIMOTHY WIRTH: What we did is that we went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room. And so when the- when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot.[Shot of witnesses at hearing]

stevo says:
October 29, 2011 at 5:24 pm
A decade is too short a time to discern any trend in global temperatures at current rates of change. It’s such a very simple concept but apparently still too difficult for some.
==============================================================
It’s 1/3 of the record…..

LazyTeenager says:
October 29, 2011 at 4:53 pm
And Ira since you are trying to turn some snow into a GISS NASA bashing exercise, I sort of feel you should actually read and understand what they say about extreme climate events, as I have an inkling you are not accurately representing their position.
========
Ira, at no point, ever made any representation of the “GISS NASA” position.
Position, being the operative word.

LazyTeenager;
And Ira since you are trying to turn some snow into a GISS NASA bashing exercise, I sort of feel you should actually read and understand what they say about extreme climate events, as I have an inkling you are not accurately representing their position.>>>
Ira’s comment wasn’t specific to NASA/GISS, it was a general comment about the warmist position, and yes, they have made it very clear, countless times, that they predict increased extreme weather events to be caused by warming. It is in the IPCC reports and countless studies and papers since then, not to mention that the MSM jumps to that conclusion almost automatically whenever an extreme weather event happens.
While Ira chose the site of NASA/GISS HQ to underscore the matter, regardless of what NASA/GISS may or may not say today, Hansen and Schmidt are both from NASA/GISS and both had major input into IPCC AR4. They continue to back those conclusions to this day (despite having NO explanation for why none of their predictions have come true)

stevo says: and also @ LazyTeenager says:
October 29, 2011 at 4:47 pm
Smokey, are you blind? Your graph shows clearly the very acceleration that you’re claiming isn’t there.
“BEST, HadCrut, RSS, GIS all show no warming for the past decade….”
A decade is too short a time to discern any trend in global temperatures at current rates of change. It’s such a very simple concept but apparently still too difficult for some.
==============================================================
Who says and how did they come to that conclusion? The fact is, there has been no warming in the last decade, and people continue to speak of a warming world. What’s even funnier, people equate current climatic events to a warming world, when, without any doubt, this earth hasn’t warmed in over ten years! It really can’t be both ways. If events today are occurring with more frequency, then if falsifies the doom and gloom of CAGW, because it hasn’t gotten warmer in the last ten years. What we should have seen was an increase in climatic events in the 90s, but we didn’t……. rest easy lads! I think we’re gonna be ok. Well, climate wise anyway, we’ve got work to do to undo the damage already done, but I think we can pull it off!

stevo says:
October 29, 2011 at 5:24 pm
“A decade is too short a time to discern any trend in global temperatures at current rates of change. It’s such a very simple concept but apparently still too difficult for some.”
So you’ll stop yammering in 20 years when we’re deep in the solar minimum? Fine. Some are slow learners.

LazyTeenager says:
October 29, 2011 at 4:53 pm
“And Ira since you are trying to turn some snow into a GISS NASA bashing exercise, I sort of feel you should actually read and understand what they say about extreme climate events, as I have an inkling you are not accurately representing their position.”
Have you ever heard about the concept of the falsifiability of a theory?
Re the extreme climate events, we just had posts about Stefan Rahmstorf’s newest convolut where he shows, by using his very own definition of trend, that the CAGW theory is predicting more extreme events in the future, whether warming or cooling, while not being affected by any extreme event in the past, say a warm maximum in 1890.
CAGW science has been reduced to a laughing stock… you should purge some of the more inept reserachers if you want to retain any semblance of a scientific approach.
And yes, the CAGW movement could continue their postnormal pseudoscience forever, I have nothing against it, as long as they pay for it themselves.

“Who says and how did they come to that conclusion?”
Anyone with an ounce of sense, and simple statistical analyses in which you derive the trend and the uncertainty on the trend helped them to come to that conclusion.
“The fact is, there has been no warming in the last decade”
The fact is, you can’t tell what the trend is over the past ten years. It is a very, very simple concept, but clearly much, much too difficult for some.
“without any doubt, this earth hasn’t warmed in over ten years”
The fact is, you can’t tell what the trend is over the past ten years. It is a very, very simple concept, but clearly much, much too difficult for some.
“because it hasn’t gotten warmer in the last ten years”
The fact is, you can’t tell what the trend is over the past ten years. It is a very, very simple concept, but clearly much, much too difficult for some. But the last ten years has been the warmest ten year period in the directly measured climate record.

A decade is too short a time to discern any trend in global temperatures at current rates of change. >>>
Well how about 20 years then? 20 years ago I threw a snowball at my eldest son, knocking him to the ground and instigating a nasty scolding from the missus. This year I threw a snowball of the same approximate size, from the same approximate distance, and to ensure the experiment was valid, I made certain to use the exact same son. The snowball had very little effect.
I was going to dissect the snowball to see if there were any signs of global warming contained inside it, rings, anything…but eldest son elected to wash my face with it before I had the chance. This proves global warming, there can be no other explanation for the drastic reduction in snowball effectiveness.

RM says:
October 29, 2011 at 5:35 pm
Stevo says: “A decade is too short a time to discern any trend in global temperatures at current rates of change. It’s such a very simple concept but apparently still too difficult for some.”
Hmmm…
Explain then why in 1988, Dr. Jim Hansen, with less than a decade of temperature data to support him, went before congress to claim that he had seen the effects of AGW, and pushed his three scenarios?
Because, just as Ira points out every warm event anywhere was proof of CAGW, so too, a decade is only meaningful when it appears to support CAGW.
Ira – “So now, it is the turn for us Skeptics to show how silly such claims are.” and right on cue, the silliness comes forth.
We must learn to forgive them, RM, because they know not how to stop being what they are.

LazyTeenager says:
October 29, 2011 at 4:47 pm
“People are also making judgements about the degree of extremity of extreme events relative to their memory of past extreme events. This is not reliable by itself, but if extra extreme happens on a regular basis it does constitute evidence.”
What is YOUR personal gain in promoting the CAGW nonsense?

Didn’t you guys read the other thread about the heat wave in Moscow? Extreme events are supposed to increase. The warming will cause more snow earlier in the season. It doesn’t matter that it’s unprecedented, it’s still consistent with a warming world. Weather is climate, and it’s worse than we thought.

Smokey says:
October 29, 2011 at 5:53 pm
Occupy GISS… and the EPA!
==================================================
No doubt, what most people fail to understand, is that every time the EPA shuts down or halts an electrical plant from producing energy, is that we thwart our production capacity. Less energy = less production. Less production = less wealth. Less wealth = less jobs. This is why our economy can’t rebound as it normally would. So, yes, if people feel the need to “occupy” something, the EPA is a great place to start.

“A decade is too short a time to discern any trend in global temperatures at current rates of change. It’s such a very simple concept but apparently still too difficult for some.”
That is because the “current rate of change” is so very, very close to zero. Not catastrophically large in the warming direction. It’s such a very simple concept but apparently still too difficult for some.

>> LazyTeenager says:
October 29, 2011 at 4:53 pm
And Ira since you are trying to turn some snow into a GISS NASA bashing exercise, I sort of feel you should actually read and understand what they say about extreme climate events, as I have an inkling you are not accurately representing their position. <<
As far as I can tell, their position is that ANYTHING is proof of global warming. Does that sum it up? Do they actually have a statement on what measurement would falsify AGW?

David Falkner,
You forgot to add: “/sarc”.
• • •
stevo says: “The fact is, you can’t tell what the trend is over the past ten years. It is a very, very simple concept, but clearly much, much too difficult for some.”
The warming trend line has been the same since the 1600’s:http://oi52.tinypic.com/2agnous.jpg
There has been no acceleration of the warming trend. Therefore, the CO2 conjecture is looking pretty damn weak. CO2 may add a little bit of warming, but obviously the 40% increase in that harmless and beneficial trace gas has not caused any problems at all – and it has provided plenty of verifiable benefits.

Smokey says:
October 29, 2011 at 5:53 pm
Occupy GISS… and the EPA!
___________________________________
Great idea but let’s add the USDA and FDA. They are just as corrupt and will also cost tax payers a bundle in the coming years.
Oh heck let’s just occupy K street!

THANKS ALL for your comments, on both sides of this issue.
I particularly appreciated the link to New York City live webcams from

GaryP says:
October 29, 2011 at 4:28 pm
Web cams are available here: http://nyctmc.org/
There are traffic cameras at Broadway and Pine and Broadway and Vesey. No snow as of 7:28 pm

I checked the locations to see if any were near Broadway and W112th Street where GISS is located. The closest/best I found is Central Park West at 96th Street (http://nyctmc.org/google_popup.php?cid=329). As of 9:50PM NY time, it shows some snow sticking on the tops of parked cars and on the ground near them. But, the high-traffic street is merely wet. It will be nice to see if the snow sticks through the light of Sunday morning.
If any WUWT reader is in New York City, and if the snow sticks, I’d appreciate it if you’d walk or take the subway to Broadway and W112th Street and snap a photo of the GISS building for me to post here. Either provide a link in a comment or email the photo to me ira@techie.com
If I was still living in Brooklyn, and not here in Central Florida (where “snow” is a “four-letter word”), I would do it myself.
AdvTHANKSance

Stevo says “the last ten years has been the warmest ten year period in the directly measured climate record.”
Thermometers were invented at the end of the LIA and temps have generally rebounded since then. Therefore, some of the warmest years “directly measured” occurred fairly recently. This is a very, very simple concept, but clearly much, much too difficult for some.
The temperatures of the most recent decade are as much a portent as are the temperatures of the first week of June in the northern hemisphere. “Oh no! Last week was the warmest of the year! The trees are going to burst into flames and the lakes are going to boil!”.

I note that Central Park apparently received no snow between 2PM and 8PM:
… Record October snowfall amount set for Central Park NY…
As of 2 PM today… Central Park recorded 1.3 inches of snowfall.
——
… Record daily maximum snowfall set at Central Park NY…
As of 8 PM today… a record snowfall of 1.3 inches was recorded at
Central Park NY.

30 years warming, 30 years cooling which is blatantly obvious from the last 120 years data.
So now we cool, despite the efforts of those entrusted with the data to diddle the data to fit their theories.
Believing in ‘trends’ in climate is hopelessly childish and the believe will always be crushed by the next turn of the cycle.

stevo;
But the last ten years has been the warmest ten year period in the directly measured climate record.>>>
I love that argument. Let’s see, we’ve been on a warming trend since the 1600’s. So… the last century was warmer than the century before. The warmest in hundreds of years in fact. So, instead of talking about which was the warmest, let’s talk…by how much?
Arguably, there was a ten year time period in the 1930’s to 40’s that was warmer, depending on whose temp record you use. But let’s use Jim Hansen’s which after adjustments, more adjustments, some fiddling, then some adjustments, shows this last ten years is the warmest on record…by a few one hunfredths of one degree. Oooooh. I’m scared.
Let’s look at that through an analogy that everyone understands. Money.
Let’s say on day one I stuff $100 into my mattress. On day 2, I stuff $100 into my mattress. On day 3, I stuff $100 into my mattress, and so on for 100 days. I’ve now got $10,000 stuffed into my mattress. On day 101, I stuff one penny into my mattress. On day 102, I stuff one penny into my mattress. And so on for 100 days. At the end of 200 days, I’ve got $10,001 in my mattress.
It would be technically accurate to say that over the last 100 days, I’ve had more money in my mattress than EVER BEFORE. In fact, the last ten days, I’ve had more money than at any time in the last 200 days. Again, completely accurate. And, totaly meaningless. The extra ten cents would not be missed for a moment if I took the money out of the mattress to spend it. In fact, I wouldn’t even bother looking for it if I noticed it was missing.
So…the warmiong of the last few hundred years? Sure, let’s go with it is the warmest ten years on record. Completely meaningless. Now the warming since the LIA until now? Take that away from us and you’ll get the downside of climate change really, Really, REALLY fast, because we’ll have something called massive crop failure, famine, and deaths from cold that make any disaster of recent memory look like tiddly winks.
But keep counting those last few hundredths of a degree. they’re like my last ten cents of savings. Can’t be bothered trying to find it (if it is there at all) because it is meaningless.

When James Hansen made his prediction about the West Side Highway in Manhattan being underwater by 2028, it is a pity that the reporter did not stop to ask the (now-obvious) question: “Will the water be in liquid state (e.g. rising up from the river) or will it fall from the sky in solid state (as snow)?”

Smokey doesn’t know the difference between England and the whole planet. Get yourself a globe, kid, and see if you can find England on it. Come back and tell me, does it occupy a) a large part of the globe, or b) hardly any of it?

stevo says:
October 29, 2011 at 5:24 pm
“A decade is too short a time to discern any trend in global temperatures at current rates of change. ”
Two decades is proof postive of warming then? 1976-1998.
1940-1976 and 1999-2012 cooling. For one third of my life it has been warming and for two thirds cooling.

stevo says:
October 29, 2011 at 6:14 pm
lol, thanks stevo. That was quite an argument. It is because it is but obviously you’re too simple to understand it is because it is.
I think you should come back with something more substantial than that. Of course I can’t tell what the least squares trend is….. just look the formula up. But, here is a fact that is obvious to anyone else, my arbitrary time constraint is every bit as valid as your arbitrary time constraint.
But, hey, I’m a generous guy…… here is a 30 yr trend in the midst of exponentially increasing atmospheric CO2….. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1944/to:1974/plot/gistemp/from:1944/to:1974/trend See how it correlates?……. Me either. Oh, wait!!! Maybe its gotta be 100 yrs or so…… pphhhhttt…. simplistic…. that’s a word.

stevo says:
“Smokey doesn’t know the difference between England and the whole planet.”
The more stevo comments, the less intelligent he appears to be. The chart I provided has temperatures for Copenhagen Denmark, Washington DC, London England, New York City, Minneapolis Minnesota, Geneva Switzerland, St. Petersburg Russia, and Berlin GDR. Maybe not the whole planet, but more than half the earth’s total land area.
There has been no acceleration of the natural warming trend since the LIA in any of those cities, despite a ≈40% increase in harmless, beneficial CO2. So much for stevo’s wild-eyed belief system.
Those pesky facts always get in the way of the alarmist contingent’s failed assumptions, the same way that Occam’s Razor, the scientific method, transparency, and the null hypothesis do. The entire cAGW scare is built on always-inaccurate computer models. But reality and empirical evidence trump every model, and the planet is clearly telling us that CO2 is not a problem.

Gail Combs says:
Oh heck let’s just occupy K street!
My most fervent hope is for someone new to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania street, or Ave, come January, 2013. If fear for the future of humanity if this does not come to pass. I see about an 80 year cycle going on here, politically speaking. Do the math.

TBear (Sydney, where it has still not warmed, and alsmost finished the coldest freakin' October in 50 yrs ...)says:

“stevo says:
October 29, 2011 at 6:14 pm
But the last ten years has been the warmest ten year period in the directly measured climate record.”
As a retired physics teacher, let me try to explain things from a different perspective. I will define displacement and velocity in the process. Displacement is the change in position. So if you started at sea level and climbed to the top of Mount Everest, your displacement would be 29,029 feet up. Now suppose you rapidly reached the top in 1998 and then started to slowly walk down at the rate of 10 feet per year. Velocity is the rate of change of position. So in this example, the velocity is 10 feet per year down. Now if you walked down for 12 years, your velocity would be down, even though you would still be very high up during those 12 years.
So it is perfectly possible to be high up (warmest ten year period), and at the same time be going down (or possibly cooling in our analogy).
By the way, according to the HADCRUT3 record, 1998 was the warmest year and 2011 so far, to the end of August, it is the 11th warmest. See: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
Since it does not look good to have 15 years of cooling for certain people, the suggestion is made that 15 years is no longer a good yardstick and 17 years is needed. And Trenberth talks of “20 years or longer” for some other purpose. I think I know why.

Werner Brozek;
I really like the climbing the mountain analogy, thanks! May I have your permission to use it? If not, I shall just steal it. 😉
I thought of another one that I’m still working on because my “money” explanation is apparently too long to hold anyone’s attention. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
I throw a ball up in the air. At the peak of the ball’s trajectory, it has a vertical velocity of zero. If I measure the vertical velocity of the ball at multiple points along the trajectory prior to the peak, and then extrapolate the resulting curve, the only conclusion I can come to is that the ball’s velocity tends to zero, and it will simply stop and remain stuck in the air.
Or maybe the way to go is to explain that at the peak of the ball’s trajectory, it is by definition, higher than it ever has been before….
The latter makes the point in a more realistic manner I suppose, I just like the image of the ball stuck in the air more. LOL.

Nick Stokes says:
October 29, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Odd reporting here. The headline “Inches of “Global Warming” Get Dumped on NASA-GISS HQ”. And sure enough, photo of snow, But the only actual fact is a weather forecast.
=============================
Well ain’t that the kettle calling the pot black. Isn’t that what “your side” has been doing to the point of fraud over these past years? Namely, “The only actual fact is a weather [climate] forecast.”
For NYC this is not the 6 to 10 they predicted on the coastal plain before Halloween…truly an extreme, extreme, EXTREME event in a “warming world”, right???
So your requested photos of Gavin Schmidt smirking somewhere nearby in a coffee shop near NASA GI** headquarters may disappoint.
But no problem….just check out some webcams or photos tomorrow a little to the NE of the Big Apple and you will get plenty of the snow pics that you need….in OCTOBER (barely Autumn in the NH) next to a warm Atlantic….in a “warming” world.
And in closing, check out the “actual facts” of this snow emergency in real time.
“… Travel is not recommended tonight across southwest New
Hampshire… western Massachusetts and north central Connecticut…
Bands of heavy snow continued to fall across the region as of 10
PM… with snowfall rates of 1 to 3 inches per hour. The heavy wet
snow will result in tree damage and widespread power outages. The
intensity of the snow will begin to diminish after midnight.
This is an extremely dangerous situation as the heavy
accumulation of snow will make some roads impassable
overnight… and downed trees will block some roadways. There may
also be live wires down. Non-essential travel is highly
discouraged tonight.”
==================
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Two feet. Plainfield MA. Check out the obs from Plainfield. 26 degrees F in OCTOBER. They have recorded 24 inches. Incredible.
… Winter Storm Warning remains in effect until 8 am EDT Sunday…
* locations… southern New Hampshire… western and central
Massachusetts as well as northern Connecticut.
* Hazard types… heavy wet snow and strong winds.
* Accumulations… 12 to 18 inches of snow… locally up to 2 feet
in the higher elevations in northwest Massachusetts
* timing… the heaviest snow with snowfall rates of 1 to 3 inches
per hour will diminish from west to east between midnight and 4
am.
* Impacts… heavy wet snow and strong winds will result in tree
damage… power outages… and Road closures. Some roadways will
be impassable.
==============
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

15″ in Penacook, New Hampshire. The forecast was first for 5-10 and then 6-12. We seem to be in the center of the snow band so far.
I was busy updating the Rossi post and didn’t have a chance to clear the snow board. I wasn’t expecting so much!.
There’s a very good chance this will be the deepest snow fall all season.
We still have power, a lot of folks don’t. There have been a number of fickers, some enough to confuse the television.

“davidmhoffer says:
October 29, 2011 at 9:30 pm
Werner Brozek;
I really like the climbing the mountain analogy, thanks! May I have your permission to use it?”
Yes, by all means use anything I may write! I view the WUWT site as a means to get ideas that we can use elsewhere such as letters to the editor of our local paper, etc. As far as your ball in the air is concerned, neglecting air resistance, the upward speed at 1.0 seconds before the top equals the downward speed at 1.0 seconds after the top. So this cannot be used with the present scenario with 1998 being the warmest year. Otherwise the 1990s would have had to be warmer than the 2000 to 2010 period. That is why I intentionally said the rise was rapid and the descent slow, which is exactly how it happened temperature wise.

Here is this very night when it snowed so early in the year in Manhattan, this 29th day of October in the year 2011, looking up through snow on the sidewalk across Broadway from Tom’s Diner:http://i.minus.com/iNdtgAJtgo4C4.jpg
-=NikFromNYC=-

savethesharks says:
October 29, 2011 at 9:49 pm
Looks like you might have a contender for what we had here in Minnesota back in 1991http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Halloween_blizzard
Duluth ended up with 37 inches, Mpls/St Paul 28 inches , in SE MN where I am the snow fall was smaller, but we started with 2-3 inches of ice. Bismark SD hit -10 F breaking the daily record by 16 degrees. We got another big hit at the end of Nov., 12-18″ over most of the state. Never saw real dirt from Halloween until damn near Easter

Kev-in-Uk says:
October 29, 2011 at 3:36 pm
For those of you in the good ole US of A – please keep hold of your share of global warming (akak Snow) for as long as possible – as we really don’t fancy it over here in the UK
Thanks in anticipation!
My old Ma used to say when she was alive, “Snow in America that means we will get it in three weeks time!”

Jimmy Haigh says:
October 29, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Nick Stokes says:
October 29, 2011 at 2:25 pm
“Odd reporting here. The headline “Inches of “Global Warming” Get Dumped on NASA-GISS HQ”. And sure enough, photo of snow, But the only actual fact is a weather forecast.”
Now you know how we feel.”
……Spot On!!!!!!!!!!

davidmhoffer: “Arguably, there was a ten year time period in the 1930′s to 40′s that was warmer”
Not in any global temperature record you could care to dig up. I think perhaps you got the United States and the entire planet confused. Funny how that mistake, which I can’t imagine anyone making in any other context, seems to crop up so often here.
James Sexton: “my arbitrary time constraint is every bit as valid as your arbitrary time constraint”
Nope. Statistics tells us that 10 years is not useful but that 30 years is useful. Nothing arbitrary about it. Like I say, this whole business of needing a certain amount of data before you can determine a trend is very, very simple, but evidently much, much too difficult for you. When did you last study any maths?

These early snow falls … in October! Crikey! But I’ve worked out why this is happening!
It’s all to do with Dr David Viner, that infamous senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia… yes, the ‘climategate university’!!!
Anyone remember this…http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
In March 2000, when Viner uttered those fateful words , “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” it seems that was the day ‘Mother Nature’ decided, “Right… that’s it! I’ve had enough of this catastrophic man-made global warming crap!”
And things have never been the same again for the climate change charlatans. Mother Nature called their bluff! Ever since, everything seems to have gone wrong for them. Quite hilarious, really!

Doesn’t matter whether the storm is early, if it dumps 10 feet of snow, snarls traffic and freezes countless numbers. Remember this sort of thing has been completely anticipated by global warming theory.

Not as bad as freezing rain. Had a heavy one of those in Oklahoma where I lived in a wooded area a few years ago and literally every 30 sec to a minute you could hear a limb crack and snap. Made quite a mess. So in this way NE types might be a bit luckier (this time).

Wow. Even my 10 year old knows that global temperature would be measured by a thermometer, not a rain or snow gauge.
This guy has a PhD? In what exactly?
And, for those with even a little bit of knowledge on the subject, higher temperatures = greater ability to hold water…which leads to more rain and snow.
Seriously, anyone know what this guy’s PhD is in? I’m guessing something like Culinary Science…

stevo;
Nope. Statistics tells us that 10 years is not useful but that 30 years is useful. Nothing arbitrary about it. Like I say, this whole business of needing a certain amount of data before you can determine a trend is very, very simple, but evidently much, much too difficult for you. When did you last study any maths?>>>
Oh is it? Then why did BEST publish ten years of data and draw conclusions from them?
But I agree. It is a complex system, and it will take decades for any change in forcing to play itself out in all the complexities imposed by feedback systems. On the other hand, if we speak only of the DIRECT effects of CO2, they happen at…the speed of light.
Where are they?

stevo says:
October 30, 2011 at 5:21 am
“Nope. Statistics tells us that 10 years is not useful but that 30 years is useful.”
Please define “useful”, and deliver a proof – this should be easy for someone like you with advanced knowledge about statistics and mathematics. Your proof should begin with “We define “useful” as…”
This American “No Child Left Behind” thing produces funny results, I must say.

unbound says:
October 30, 2011 at 8:39 am
“And, for those with even a little bit of knowledge on the subject, higher temperatures = greater ability to hold water…which leads to more rain and snow.”
This one is especially for you, unbound:
Brenda Ekwurzel, explaining the theory of turbocharged weather patterns.

stevo;
Not in any global temperature record you could care to dig up. I think perhaps you got the United States and the entire planet confused. Funny how that mistake, which I can’t imagine anyone making in any other context, seems to crop up so often here.>>>
Try NASA/GISS of HadCrut broken up by NH and SH. What you’ll find is that the NH has a very pronounced warming period in that time frame across the whole hemisphere, not just the United States, that is warmer than the rest of the record. The SH is in a cooling phase at that point, well below average, and the average of the two reduces the global number. If you fast forward to the last 20 years or so, you’ll see that there is an approximate 60 to 75 year warm/cool cycle in the NH and about a 90 to 105 year warm/cool cycle in the SH. The “warm” parts of the cycle for both coincide for the first time in a long time around 1990, giving rise to an “average” between the two that appears on the surface to support higher than normal global temperatures.
In fact, all it shows is NORMAL temperatures with the cycles between NH and SH coinciding to produce a misleading average between the two. This is no different than screaming that the ice is melting in the arctic as prood of global warming while ignoring the fact that ice is increasing even faster in the SH. The two hemispheres are very different, one being mostly land with an ocean cap and the other being mostly water with a land cap. It stands to reason that natural cycles will have different wave lengths, and a quick glance at the data shows they do. Drawing conclusions about what is happening when the cycles are in opposition to each other has no more value than drawing conclusions about what is happening when the cycles are complimenting each other. Everything needs to be in context.
Throw a ball into the air and you can say two things about it at the peak of its trajectory. First, you can say that it is higher than it ever has been before. Second, you could also say that it has a vertical velocity of zero. If we convert this to climate speak, it is the highest on record, but the increase in altitude has taken a hiatus. A few moments after the peak we could even say that the last few data points show a slight decrease, but there aren’t enough of them to say for certain that a falling trend has taken over, we need more data, all the models show its just a hiatus in the ball’s upward trend demonstrated very clearly by all the data points so far.
Nice, but the ball is going to fall, acclerating as it goes, and that’s just the way it is. The climate scientists gabbing on about the hottest decade on record remind me of Daffy Duck in that Bugs Bunny cartoon where Daffy walks off the edge of a cliff, looks down, and says in slight panic “gravity works”.

Jay Curtis says:
October 30, 2011 at 7:01 am
Doesn’t matter whether the storm is early, if it dumps 10 feet of snow, snarls traffic and freezes countless numbers. Remember this sort of thing has been completely anticipated by global warming theory.
Only after it had been adjusted to take account of increasing snowfall!

James ibbotson says:
October 30, 2011 at 10:51 am
Dear Americans.
Why on earth do you still have power delivered via cables over ground ?Thats just asking for trouble.
Why arn’t they underground like the u.k.
Peer review: Sorry James you are telling porkies. If you say things like this some people will believe you!
Regards Kelvin

Is there a place for a term – warmmonger?
Also, we might want to modify Occupy Wall Street to Communists Occupy Wall Street, or COWS.
Alternatively, the group could be Sad Hopeless Economics Enervating People or SHEEP.
Nah. Why bother? “Idiots” does just as well. Perhaps, “Ignorant Democrats Insist On Trashing Success”. These are the same people who support CAGW. It’s not science. It’s about taking control.
Just to be “fair”, forget RINO when there could be RUMP – Republicans Utterly Mismanaging Politics (or Policy).
Now, back to trying to get this dang program to compile….

stevo says:
October 30, 2011 at 5:21 am
“Nope. Statistics tells us that 10 years is not useful but that 30 years is useful.”
———————————————–
Ten years is long enough to refute a number of claims with statistically significantly (divergence ground based and tropospheric data, divergence measured and modelled temperatures),
but 30 yerars is fraudulent, when it goes along and matches exactly one of the major natural half cycles.

He unbound.
To freeze water, the air must lose about 100 times the heat that it takes to go from one degree to the next. That means it must be COLD for it to snow.
For all that snow to form, cold air has to fed into the storm. That cold air has to come from somewhere.

unbound says:
October 30, 2011 at 8:39 am
Wow. Even my 10 year old knows that global temperature would be measured by a thermometer, not a rain or snow gauge.
This guy has a PhD? In what exactly? …
Seriously, anyone know what this guy’s PhD is in? I’m guessing something like Culinary Science…

I assume the “guy” unbound is referring to is me. As it says in the About Ira Glickstein, PhD box at the head of the comments, I am a “System Engineer (Advanced Avionics and Visionics, Route Planning, Decision Aiding, Five Patents … at IBM, Lockheed-Martin); Associate Professor (System Engineering at University of Maryland); PhD in System Science (Binghamton University, 1996); MS in System Science (Binghamton); Bachelors in Electrical Engineering (CCNY)” So I know a bit about engineering and science, and the real-world science behind complex systems. Would you agree that Climate is a good example of a complex system?
I also know that “weather is not climate” which is why I wrote “… every time there is a heat wave anywhere in the world, that weather event is put forth as ‘proof’ of Global Warming, with the implication that human activities are responsible for most of the warming. So now, it is the turn for us Skeptics to show how silly such claims are.” Get it? Any claims that implicate Global Warming (or Cooling) based on individual hot (or cold) weather event is “silly”, and I was making the connection between unprecedented October snow in NYC NOT saying anything more meaningful than some record-breaking warm weather event about Global Cooling (or Warming).

And, for those with even a little bit of knowledge on the subject, higher temperatures = greater ability to hold water…which leads to more rain and snow.

Yes, in general higher temperatures will tend to increase the amount of atmospheric moisture and thus precipitation events. So, in a place like NYC where it almost never snows in October, and even when it does the recorded maximum was less than one inch, it is news when an unheard of several inches of snow fall. Had it been extra rain, it would not have been news, would it?

How long to determine a trend ??
I did myself a little thought experiment – perhaps one or two people could comment on what is wrong with it :
Consider a sine curve.
To see it in its entirety you need to see at least 360 degrees
But to PROVE it is repeating – how many complete cycles would you need – obviously more than one. But after 5cycles it would be pretty much proven – within some arbitrary level of confidence.
Now lets look at points on the curve <360
if I look at 45deg +/- 0,5 degree and measure in 10the of a degree I'm pretty sure I would see a trend – and if I suspected a sine curve I may be able to do some appalling curve fitting – guessing amplitude and how much of the curve I was sampling (in this case 1/360 th)
If I looked at 90 deg +/-0.5 degree I'd see a trend as well
If I looked at 89 deg +/- 0.5 deg I'd see a trend too – ever so gently incresing
Probably going to use the wrong definitions now – Sample Space – the size of the function that is sampled – in the above examples the sample space is 1 degree…(what's the correct term ?)
So – regardless of the sample space I will see a trend from that function. If the sample space is too small – as long as I have enough SAMPLES to make a meaningful plot.
SO why is 10 years NOT long enough to see a trend ?
It may after all be a 10 year trend imposed on a 1000 year cycle – or a 100000 year cycle
(another thought here; think amplitude modulation 3kHz on a 28000kHz carrier is easy to detect and resolve down to qhite low levels of modulation – they just become somewhat hard to pick out from noise…)

@stevo says:
October 30, 2011 at 5:21 am
Funny how that mistake, which I can’t imagine anyone making in any other context, seems to crop up so often here.
Not so funny when you’ve been following things for a while. You see, it used to be warmer, even in Hansen’s official series. Then Hansen revised it downward, but it was still warmer. Finally, upon succesive revisions, it was eventually revised downwards to the point of being cooler than the most recent peak in the continuous warming since the LIA. Oh, and just to clarify that’s its really warmer now, he continuously revises the recent record upwards. And, all the while, grossly underestimating urban heat island effects.
What was your point again?

Stevo says
“Nope. Statistics tells us that 10 years is not useful but that 30 years is useful. Nothing arbitrary about it. Like I say, this whole business of needing a certain amount of data before you can determine a trend is very, very simple, but evidently much, much too difficult for you. When did you last study any maths?”
If you really did study mathematics, you know that trends on cyclical phenomena (climate is a natural phenomenon, hence cyclical) should usually be measured for longer than the cycle length. Shorter length trends may be useful to show where we are in the cycle.
Ten to fifteen year trends show where we are in the cycle. Thirty year trends (c. half of a cycle) can easily mislead the observer.

DirkH says:
October 30, 2011 at 10:04 am
———
It is appauling that concerned scientists like Ekwurzel spread their truths in TV and youtube but disable the comment function. They have no interest in discussing their expensive views, causing so much harm to tax payers. No chance to ask, why such simplistic views are applicable here but not elsewhere.
For example, if there is more moisture in the air and more precipitation, wouldn’t that also reduce and shorten draughts and be beneficial for mankind? The IPCC had already lied about this subject:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/18/how-the-ipcc-portrayed-a-net-positive-impact-of-climate-change-as-a-negative/
Another simplistic view not really communicated by concerned scientists:
As high latitudes warm faster, wouldn’t that reduce the temperature gradient und reduce the strength of winter storms, but hey that would be another benefit ? And global cyclone activity actually is at multi decade lows.
Finally, blaming global warming for a local weather event appears to be no so clever, as global temperatures have been running low in recent months compared with recent years:http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000

James ibbotson says:
October 30, 2011 at 10:51 am
Dear Americans.
Why on earth do you still have power delivered via cables over ground ?Thats just asking for trouble.
Why arn’t (sic) they underground like the u.k.
In my bit of the U.K. the power arrives in the village across several miles of overhead cable. We get power cuts every year. I’ve just invested in an inverter to install in my Land Rover to give me around 2.5kW of mains power for when the cables come down this year.

I really dislike this warmist bullscheisse about ‘peaking on Everest’ and a ball being ‘stuck in the air’. Fantasy land once again.
Everest is the highest mountain on Earth, 1998 was certainly not the hottest. And as for the ‘ball stuck in the air’ schlock, has gravity occurred to you??
Time to take yourselves off to a dark room, and hug your knees.

A report from relations in Worthington, Mass.: a yardstick was shoved down into the snowfall, bottom not found.
That’s over 36″ of Global Cooling. I have to call it Global Cooling, because that’s the language that is required to effect communication.

Two weeks ago, over on the thread Shifting Sun-Earth-Moon Harmonies, Beats, & Biases
Posted on October 15, 2011 by Anthony Watts
Paul L. Vaughan, M.Sc. – October 2011
I posted this comment;
Richard Holle says:
October 17, 2011 at 9:33 pm
Watch what happens when we have a Synod conjunction with Jupiter on 10-29-2011 when the moon is maximum south declination. There should be a larger than usual meridional surge of warm moisture coming off of the equator into the mid-latitudes having some intense interaction with the Mobil Polar Highs that will be forming the other half of the lunar tidal bulges in both hemispheres.
These patterns are what got me interested in wanting to understand WTF was going on, back in 1983.
***************************************
Well here is the surge in moisture and the MPH making an early snow storm right on time in New England, on the following loop you can watch the interaction as it flows together.
Richard Hollehttp://www.atmos.washington.edu/~ovens/loops/wxloop.cgi?wv_east_enhanced+48+-update+3600
Now people are saying it is an extreme weather event that was not forecast for this time of year, it has little to do with the date that it happens it has all to do with the planetary synod conjunctions, if people would only look at the interactions, and study the patterns it would make long range forecasting much easier.

Warmer winters and cooler summers in the northern hemisphere is how interglacial periods end. It just has to be below 32F for snow to accumulate. Far below freezing is just overkill for snow accumulation. However every additional degree above freezing in the summer accelerates the melt. So global average temperature doesn’t need to change at all for glaciers to start building, there just needs to be less seasonal variation between winter and summer temperatures.

Dave Springer;
It just has to be below 32F for snow to accumulate. Far below freezing is just overkill for snow accumulation.>>>
Actually, snowfall can occurr a couple of degrees above freezing as the snowflakes may be below freezing but not the ambient temperature. Further, if temps are “far” below freezing, there is very little snow at all. We who live in winter climates call it being “too cold to snow”. While technically it actually does, the snow at minus 30 is pretty much dust rather than flakes, and there isn’t very much of it. Most snow falls between a couple of degrees above zero and a few degrees below zero.
Temperature alone however is not what determines glacier growth. Glacier growth is determined by the amount of snow accumulated in winter versus the amount that melts in summer. So, a warmer winter might easily result in more days suited to snowfall, and the increased snowfall, even when coupled with an also warmer summer, may grow the glacier. It is the amount of snow in winter minus the amount that melts in the summer that determines glacier growth, and surprisingly mild winters that hove arounf the freezing point will contribute a lot more to that growth than do very very cold winters.

Re: Ira Glickstein, PhD says:
October 30, 2011 at 1:04 pm
Funny how Smokey didn’t pop in and explain how on WUWT, you never, ever, argue from authority…
Second funny point is how the recent BEST posts have the regulars proclaiming “of course we know it’s warming, we never, ever, said it wasn’t.” And now they are right back to the cooling meme.

jakers,
If you’re going to be a fool, don’t post comments – keep it to yourself, you’ll be better off.
First, you presume to understand what I’m thinking without my posting a comment. You’re not up to that level of understanding, my friend. And second, you quoted, verbatim: “of course we know it’s warming, we never, ever, said it wasn’t.” Quotation marks mean exactly the same as a cut and pasted quote.
I challenge you to source that quote. If you can’t post who said it, and where, and when, then you are misrepresenting what others are saying. In other words, you’re lying. That is the default response when the alarmist crowd realizes the planet isn’t cooperating with their failed predictions. Honest folks would just admit they were wrong, and move on.
Also FYI, the planet both warms and cools, depending on the time frame and the trend. For the past decade it’s not done much of either. Before that it warmed, naturally. And before that, it cooled, naturally. But for the past fifteen decades the temperature has been amazingly flat, varying between 288K and 288.8K. That’s nothing, as the ice core evidence from both hemispheres proves.
Next time you want to comment on what someone never said, it’s best to argue about it with yourself.

Nick Stokes says:“Smokey is wrong. Those are detrended plots”.
“Chart” is a noun. “Plot” is a verb. I posted a chart… on which data was plotted.
I suppose that sorry nitpicking is Nick’s best anti-skeptic argument. Sad.
• • •
jakers,
Name the others. Chapter and verse. The mouse in your pocket doesn’t count. And where’s your quote citation? I’m sure I’m not the only one who knows you were lying. Prove me wrong, and I will apologize.

Smokey says: October 31, 2011 at 1:59 pm
“I suppose that sorry nitpicking is Nick’s best anti-skeptic argument. Sad.”
So pointing out that a de-trended chart doesn’t tell you much about trend is sorry nit-picking? OK, so again, how do your detrended charts show that stevo is wrong?

Nick,
The way you wrote, it looked like you were objecting to the word “plots”. And detrended charts [which are used all the time by everyone] still carry information or they would never be used. And of course, stevo is always wrong. Either that, or he’s right, and everyone else is wrong. What are the odds, eh?

Smokey says: October 31, 2011 at 2:54 pm
‘The way you wrote, it looked like you were objecting to the word “plots”.’
Heh – an accident. I actually italicized detrended, but because I forgot to close a previous tag, it mad eeverything italic except what followed, which was plots.

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